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What you need to know to make this your year for love

I landed in LA this week, and I am living out here for the next two months (exchanging the cold for the sun this year – YAY!).

During calls to my closest friends this week to catch up, the main sentiment is, “This year is going to be great! A new year to start fresh.”

I love the positivity. I have been seeing a “New Year a New You” in all kinds of advertising. And it’s true we have been given a brand new year to create whatever it is that we want MORE of in our life.

I know you are looking at 2014 and thinking, this is your year for love (amongst other things).

You want to feel like you are sharing your life with someone special.

You want someone to cuddle with at night.

You want someone that you are proud to be with. To hold hands with.

You deserve all of that, and it IS possible.

And it can feel like it is so out of reach right now.

I know what it’s like to feel like you’re just doomed for the single life. I, at one point, thought the love I wanted wasn’t possible for me. I didn’t have role models in love (meaning my parents) to show me that you can have a loving, understanding, and powerful partnership, where you are contributing to each others growth.

What my parents did show me was that you CAN always make it work. They are still together after 40 + years and it is just as important of a skill to know how to make it through anything as it is to feel great in your relationship. This is a life skill, not just a relationship skill, because there are always ups and downs.

They also taught me that in love there is no formula. Here’s what I mean.

Being Indian, I grew up knowing about two types of marriages.

There is either a love marriage, which means the man and woman fell in love before getting married, or there is an arranged marriage, which is when the families of the bride and groom-to-be choose someone for them. In this case, the bride and groom have probably met a handful of times and choose to marry each other.

My parents were arranged.

The crazy part about it is that I grew up evaluating whether one type of marriage was better than the other. And what I realized, through a lot of observation and research, is that one way really isn’t better than the other. We think growing up here in the West that there is only one way to have a powerful relationship.

Meeting someone, getting to know them, falling in love, moving in together, and then deciding to get married doesn’t necessarily mean you will be happier in your marriage or committed relationship than the couple that “rushed” into it and barely knew each other.

I’m letting you in on this because all of these formulas, rules, or ways you think love is “supposed” to happen just aren’t true!

Love doesn’t follow a formula, timeline, or strategy.

Really being open to love means that you’re open to the idea that there doesn’t have to be a specific mold for the way you will meet your love match.

You could literally meet a guy who is not at all your “type”, fall in love and get married in two months and have an amazing relationship.

The problem I see so many women create for themselves (and I did the same thing) is that we create the “perfect formula” in our heads.

Trying to plan out exactly how your love story is going to go down doesn’t keep you open to the possibility of the right man finding you. It keeps you tied to the idea of what you think it’s all supposed to look like instead of being present to whether someone is actually right for you or not.

So how do we help you be more present so that your perfect man can find you?

Your Lovework this week is to tell me in the comments below the timeline and the plan you’ve always had for your love life. How do you expect it to happen or think it should? I want to know!

After you type it out in the comments, I want you to then follow that by writing – “AND I am open to the possibility of love finding me in its own, amazing way!”

By following up with this declaration – you are opening yourself up for love to find you in new ways this year!